Riding A Bike...

I was reading this story about a bike thief in Toronto, the police found over 2,865 bikes he had stolen stashed in different warehouses all over the city. Toronto being one of the most bike friendly cities in the universe was outraged and a lynching is being considered. As I read the story I looked out my window at one of only two crosstown street bike lanes on the Upper East Side, one going east on East 90th Street and one going west on East 91st Street. As I looked at the bike lane several bikers in bright colored biker clad went whizzing by, colors streaming; a beautiful sight and one that is becoming more and more common all over the Upper East Side. New York City has been slow in warming to bike riders but in this age of astronomic gas prices, global warming and traffic congestion, what better way to relieve it all but to ride a bike. Riding that two wheeled miracle that besides doing all of the above gets you out into the fresh air and some exercise is a simple solution a myriad of problems. It also provides the fastest way to get from point A to point B in the city. As I continued to look out the window a bicycle built for two with a father and daughter, pedaling in unison, flew by. To be more bike friendly the city has created car-less street routes on Saturdays in August from the Brooklyn Bridge to the East 72nd Street Central Park entrance; on September 7th the New York City Bike Tour will take place with routes from 15 to 100 miles that you can spin your wheels on and enjoy; and even more exciting, soon the New York City Department of Transportation will experiment with a bike sharing program, that is in existence in Paris, where at chosen transportation hubs throughout the city you can rent a bike at a nominal cost to use and then drop off at a another designated bike station close to your destination. I can imagine the city becoming a bikers paradise and as I continued looking out my window much to my amazement a unicyclist merrily floated by and the wheels of my imagination spun in reflections of riding a bike into the future...

Two Ugly Buildings...

(Finally, after two days I was able to download these two ugly buildings, take a gander.)
(So ugly that I haven't been able to download the photos of them onto this blog for some reason, so for now you'll have to use your imagination, imagine ugly.) Anyway, it seems to me that after dealing with all the hassles that construction sites create for pedestrians and vehicles by having to walk around or through poorly built walkways or drive around double parked trucks and equipment having to deal with dust, mud and dodging the comings and going of trucks and hard hat butt cracks not to mention cranes that could fall and having to do this for almost two years on two consecutive Avenues, Third and Lexington on 86th Street and the construction site on Lexington Avenue creating havoc at the subway station not to mention the menace of at any moment a pane of glass falling down like one did off the Bank of America building last week. After dealing with all of these horrible hassles you might think that when they were done with these overpriced apartment buildings and co-ops that at least we might be rewarded with a piece of architecture that would be nice to look at or exciting to look at or actually add to the milieu of great architecture on the Upper East Side but no, what we get is a square brick building and square glass building, nothing more, nothing less. Two extremely boring buildings without even a small amount of interest in there appearance. They're ugly. All I'm asking is to put some excitement in some of these new Upper East Side buildings that are being constructed especially since we have to deal with so much as they're being built...

Silver Dollar Dreams...

That's what I like about wandering around the Upper East Side, you never know what will happen or what you will find. As I stumbled along East End Avenue I noticed a shine in a small hose created puddle that was tinged with an oily rainbow. I caught the sparkle in the corner of my eye. I leaned down and came face to face with a silver dollar that was heads down. Although it was heads down, I picked it up anyways, even if there was some bad luck associated with picking up any coin when the head is down. I remembered once when I was out with my daughter, she was about five years old at the time, we came upon a penny that was heads down and she went to pick it up and told her it was bad luck to pick up a coin that was heads down. She thought that was dumb but didn't pick it up. We walked on and about twenty feet from the coin she turned around walked back to the penny lifted it up and put it back down. When she caught up to me I asked what she had done? She said she had turned the coin so the head was up so the next person who saw it could pick it up and have some good luck. I'll remember that for the rest of my life. The silver coin I had found was so worn the date was unrecognizable, most of the face was just shiny with no In God We Trust left to be seen. I looked around to see if anyone was looking for the coin, there was no one, and there were no signs on light posts with distressed pleadings for the return of the coin. I wondered if I should go to the police but the more I looked at the coin, the more I realized it was worth nothing, with much of the face rubbed away and there being a slash on the back of the coin. I decided not to turn it in. I flipped the coin and rubbed the face imagining this was some one's good luck coin that had literally been rubbed to the nub. I put the coin in my pocket and wondered if it would be lucky for me and then I started to dream lucky silver dollar dreams...

Ocean Dreams...

On these hot, humid New York City summer days, when everybody walks and talks a little slower and the closest thing to a beach is tar beach. There's always the rivers. Carl Shurz Park on the Upper East Side is an oasis for sunbathers, pet walkers, garden admirers and those who can close their eyes and imagine that they are at the ocean. The East River does this a little better than the Hudson because of the fresh ocean smell that the tidal river sucks in from the Atlantic Ocean. I walked to Carl Schurz looking for that brief respite from the HHH (Humid Heat Hell). I had a good book and all I wanted to do was to enjoy an hour of ocean dreams while I read. I have a bench I sit on that is below the main walkway that runs over the FDR. The bench is close to the river where you can smell the brine best and look down at seaweed clutching boulders that the river laps over creating the illusion of being on a rock strewn beach. Sail boats, freighters, tug boats, barges, banana boats, yachts, jet skis, kayaks and the Circle Line stream past, sea gulls caw, and a lone loon continually dives for its lunch and coming from somewhere that I cannot see is the sounds of a bag pipe filling the ether and filling my ocean imagining mind with wistful loneliness and the yearnings for a long walk of beach-combing. I believed beyond a doubt I was on the beach and having a gaggle of women in bikinis lounging on the grass behind me was an added bonus. I sat there reading for an hour and was finally shook from my nirvana by the ripe smell of garbage from a garbage barge that
slowly chugged up the river. Never-the-less, the hour of respite was just what the doctor ordered for a sweaty, unbearable hot day. It was truth and testament that the Upper East Side with a little imagination can give many, many things to keep you inspired and at peace and even a day at the beach...